Conference Contributions

Dr Muiris MacCarthaigh presented a paper on ‘Apologies, Accountability and Organisational Reputation’ in a Session on ‘Accountability and Reputation’ at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions hosted by the University of Nicosia.

Dr Anna Bryson presented a paper entitled, ‘Apologies, Acknowledgement and Symbolic Reparations in Transitional Justice,’ at the Law and Society Association’s annual conference in Toronto in June 2018.

Prof Anne-Marie McAlinden presented a paper entitled, ”Apologies in the Aftermath of Historical Child Abuse in Ireland’ at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as part of their conference on ‘Legacies of the Past: Apologies & Memorialisation.’

Dr Muiris MacCarthaigh presented a paper entitled ‘Organisational Accountability and Reputation: The Role of Blame Acceptance’ at the European Group for Public Administration Annual Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, in September 2018. The presentation was given to an engaged audience as part of a panel on governance in public sector organisations.

Prof Kieran McEvoy was invited to give the plenary address at Hebrew University Law School in 2018 on the role of lawyers in engaging in research and activism on dealing with the past. It was entitled, ‘Human Rights, Legacy and Cultures of Violence in Northern Ireland.’

Paper presented at an international conference with an audience of approximately 30 people comprised of local, national and international academics. The presentation of the paper was followed by a question and answer session and lively panel discussion.

Prof Kieran McEvoy gave a presentation entitled ‘What is Transitional Justice’ (which included a discussion on the role of apologies) at the ‘Civil Unrest in Hong Kong Conference’ on Tuesday 21 January 2020 at The University of Hong Kong. The panel was named ‘Young People, Policing, and Transitional Justice’ and was moderated by Alex Schwartz (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong).

The conference proceedings ‘Civil Unrest in Hong Kong Conference’ written by Anna Dziedzic, Alex Schwartz and Po Jen Yap (Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong) were published Amicus Curiae, Series 2, Vol 1, No 2, 298-300 and can be accessed here.

In June 2019 Prof Kieran McEvoy gave the plenary address entitled ‘Apologies, Reparations and Non-State Armed Groups’ at the Geneva Reparations Week Conference in Geneva Switzerland. The address discussed what role apologies by non-state armed groups can play in providing symbolic reparations to victims in societies recovering from violent conflict.

In an expert meeting organized at the Geneva Academy by the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast, more than 30 academics and practitioners from a range of backgrounds and institutions from around the world discussed reparations by non-state armed groups during and following armed conflicts.

‘It was our pleasure to run our workshop in the historic Villa Moynier, which provided the conducive space to work with the academics of the Geneva Academy and others on this significant but sensitive issue’ he adds.

A KEY TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE ISSUE

Participants discussed how reparations by non-state armed groups might operate in practice during and following a conflict, what role apologies by non-state armed groups can play in providing symbolic reparations to victims, as well as the issue of humanising combatants, including their social reintegration.

‘As most armed conflicts are, today, non-international armed conflicts involving armed groups, the questions of reparations by these actors is a major issue for transitional justice’ underlines Frank Haldemann, Co-Director of our MAS in Transitional Justice, Human Rights and the Rule of Law (MTJ).

‘The research project addresses a largely neglected topic of central practical relevance, challenging many current assumptions in the field, and is therefore welcomed’, adds Thomas Unger, Co-Director of our MTJ.

A HANDBOOK FOR HUMANITARIANS

The research team at Queen’s University Belfast will build on these discussions and their research to produce in early 2020 a handbook for humanitarian organizations to engage non-state armed groups on reparations.

Prof Kieran McEvoy (PI) was invited to give a plenary address at a conference organised by The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in Bogota Colombia. The JEP is the judicial mechanism developed as part of the 2016 Peace Accord between the Colombian government and the FARC. It is designed to assist victims of violence, mass atrocity and human rights violations. The conference was entitled ‘Restorative Justice and Dealing With the Past After Conflict.’ Following on from that conference a delegation of Senior JEP judges will visit Northern Ireland in May 2020 to learn more about the role of restorative justice in conflict resolution in that jurisdiction.

In June 2019 Prof Kieran McEvoy (PI) was invited to deliver a plenary address entitled ‘The Irish Peace Process and the Uneven Transfer of Ideas: Lessons for Colombia?’ at a conference organised by the Presidential Commission for the Establishment and Consolidation of Peace in Bogota, Colombia and the government of Ireland.

Dr Anna Bryson and Dr Muiris MacCarthaigh

We live in an ‘age of apologies’, in which governments and public sector organisations seek to atone to the public for past state wrongs. The delivery of apologies is not unique to states and state actors, however, but blame acceptance by non-state actors for past wrongs affecting the public remains comparatively understudied in the political sciences. Using the island of Ireland as a case study, this paper examines public apologies by paramilitary organisations for conflict-related harms, by religious organisations for institutional abuse, and by financial institutions for the 2008 economic crisis. The research forms part of an ESRC-funded major grant project concerning ‘Apologies, Abuses and Dealing with the Past’, in which the use of apologies by state and non-state actors in Ireland as a means of offering accountability, legitimacy and reputational preservation are examined. The quantitative and qualitative data gathered to date include an all-island survey, focus groups, and interviews, and examines public apologies from both recipient and provider perspectives.

Kieran McEvoy, Anne-Marie McAlinden and Anna Bryson

Project team members presented four papers: ‘Apology, Acknowledgement and the ‘Disappeared’ of Northern Ireland’ (Lauren Dempster); ‘Apologies and Institutional Child Abuse in Ireland’ (Anne-Marie McAlinden); ‘Apologies, Acknowledgement and the National Imagination’ (Kieran McEvoy) and ‘Hearing, Seeing, Believing: Public Perceptions of Apologies for Past Harms in Ireland’ (Anna Bryson).

The team were joined on the panels by Dr Kevin Hearty, presenting on moral emotions and dealing with the past, and Dr Sarah Sargent, whose paper, ‘Sorry Not Sorry,’ addressed the Indian Child Welfare Act and the plight of indigenous children in the US.

Please contact us for further information on any of the team’s contributions.